FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Just Add Pot: The Hydroponic Farming Company Ready to Grow Weed in 48 Hours

As soon as the next state legalizes the drug, at least.
Image: Terra Tech

If you’re already growing herbs in a greenhouse, it’s not very hard to make a couple tweaks here and there and start growing cannabis instead. That simple logic is driving Terra Tech, a hydroponic farming company that specializes in pivoting from growing veggies to weed in just 48 hours—as soon as the next state legalizes marijuana.

Terra Tech, one of the first publicly traded companies to start farming cannabis, is one of the businesses positioning itself up to cash in on the nascent marijuana industry. Derek Peterson, CEO of Terra Tech, told me he believes he has the right approach to cultivating the future cash crop.

Advertisement

Terra Tech grows herbs like basil and thyme in high-tech, Dutch-style hydroponic greenhouses: glass houses that let sunlight in, with LED lights and mineral-rich water systems constantly running through and hydrating the plants’ roots.

It brings in revenue selling high-tech grow systems and hydroponic equipment. But the real money is in using the technology to grow weed.

Peterson and company are looking to break into the marijuana market at its inception wherever they can, trying to anticipate where the next place to relax pot laws might be. They’re not eyeing states like Colorado, the so-called Silicon Valley of Weed where the market is already established, but anticipating where the next green rush will be. Terra Tech has herb-growing operations in Florida and New Jersey waiting for eventual legalization, at least for medical marijuana.

Peterson claims he can modify a greenhouse for marijuana growth within 48 hours of getting approval to do so. Something like basil, one of his products, isn’t too different from the cannabis plant. So really, it’s not hard to convert the growing process. Just change the seeds.

As a former Wall Street man, Peterson looked at the marijuana growing market and saw room for improvement. He believes growing in a greenhouse is both better for business, for the product, and for the environment.

“Cultivation is still happening at a very fragmented standpoint,” Peterson said. Many people are still growing weed in warehouses or garages, which he explained isn’t energy efficient. But some states, Nevada for instance, only permit growing medical marijuana in industrial-size grows: large warehouses with artificial lighting. Nevada is also uncomfortable with the fact that greenhouses are transparent, which could cause a security problem.

Advertisement

He’s currently lobbying the state of Nevada to change zoning so the company can use greenhouses to grow weed there. He’s also lobbying to overturn similar restrictions in other states, including parts of Arizona, where medical marijuana can only be grown in places zoned for industrial or heavy commercial businesses. Nevada is the only state he’s faced resistance to  greenhouses for security reasons, Peterson said.

Peterson predicts that ultimately, some 70 percent of Terra Tech’s business could come from growing marijuana. In the meantime, the company is focusing on building agricultural structures with their grow technology.

“The future of farming is both indoor and vertical in highly productive and controlled environments,” Terra Tech's website explains. “This new era of farming technology is needed to feed our world's population while at the same time reducing our carbon footprint, generating higher yields and producing a higher quality more nutritious product.”

The company offers a fully automated system; farmers can turn the greenhouses’ boilers on and off, release CO2, get an alert if temperatures change too much and do several other tasks from their smartphone or tablet. Terra Tech’s New Jersey facility, which opened in January, automatically migrates growing tables around different parts of the facility to be attended to, so they’re not touched by a human hand in the moving process, risking contamination.

Advertisement

That facility cost $5 million to set up, a hefty sum for a greenhouse, which is why the technology is more commonly used in large-scale, expensive agricultural enterprises, not marijuana. A lot of cannabis grows are set up somewhat cheaply, but Terra Tech and a handful of other companies believes it’s worth investing in top-line monitoring equipment to be constantly aware of what’s happening with the plants.

The method also saves money: greenhouses harness the light of the sun instead of electricity. A temperature-controlled warehouse can use 24.9 kWh of electricity and 9,200 Btu of natural gas per square foot per year. That adds up.

“These large-scale indoor cultivation facilities that use supplemental lighting and high-intensity lighting are a huge energy suck, and it’s a high carbon footprint,” Peterson says. “If prices start to detract and the market starts to commoditize, you can’t support a $50,000 electric bill every month.”

But, he told me, growers often opt for operations like this anyway, because they’re easier to manage and the current price of marijuana justifies the investment in paying those bills.

Hydroponics also benefits the plant, because it doesn’t have to suck nutrients out of soil, allowing it to grow faster and larger, as the nutrients go straight to the root. It saves space, because the plant doesn’t have to grow long roots looking for nutrients. And it’s more water efficient than growing in a field or industrial grows that don’t use hydroponics.

“The beautiful thing about hydroponics, versus field farming, is that you dump water solutions with nutrients into field crops and your plant’s only absorbing 10 to 15 percent of that,” Peterson said.

Marijuana growers are increasingly focused on high-quality plants. And while Terra Tech is by no means the only player in the Grow 2.0 (3.0?) scene, it’s not hard to imagine picking some up some craft weed at the farmer’s market in the future, asking for “shade grown” or eco-friendly strains like coffee connoisseurs do now. I feel an episode of Portlandia coming on.